About

"Could you live comfortably on 5 times your average national income? Of course you could. We should be persuading our politicians and corporate managers to do the same.

At the heart of the Declaration is the idea that controlling other people’s lives and their environment is a privilege rather than another reward given to those who already have more than enough. Having responsibility for others is undoubtedly stressful but, equally, it is rewarding in and of itself.

Its strength is that anyone, politician or not, can sign and therefore register the fact that they believe in certain standards of behaviour for themselves and for their politicians and public servants. It encourages our political class not to buy their way into public life and assume they are worthy of further privilege by virtue of their existing privilege: in other words it is a charter for every citizen that sets the tone for those we elect to office or pay to run our country and our corporations; internationally, nationally, locally or at the level of a village, school or small institution or business enterprise.

There are people who believe that unfairness in life is not only the ‘natural’ way of things but that it is beneficial to society. To those people I say, simply, that you are wrong; the suffering of poverty and the arrogance of the super-rich diminishes us all. Civilisation is a serious art and those who do not take it seriously are reducing us to a life without ethics."